Second Health Reform Debate to be Held at UW

When University of Washington School of Law faculty were unable to find law professors available to argue health reform is unconstitutional at a debate last March, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Ilya Shapiro responded by saying he would debate the constitutionality "anytime, anywhere." As a result, the UW chapters of the Young Americans for Liberty and the Federalist Society will host a health reform debate between Shapiro and UW School of Law Professor Stewart Jay on May 27 from 4:30-6 p.m. in William H. Gates Hall Room 138. The debate will be moderated by UW Political Science Professor Mark Smith.

Mark Smith (Moderator)

Mark Smith (Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1997) is an associate professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Washington. He is a specialist in American politics with research interests in public opinion, interest groups, political communication, political economy, and public policy. His first book, American Business and Political Power: Public Opinion, Elections, and Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2000) won the Leon Epstein award for outstanding contributions to the study of political organizations and parties. His second book is The Right Talk: How Conservatives Transformed the Great Society into the Economic Society (Princeton University Press, 2007). In explaining the rightward turn in American politics over the last three decades, the book documents the heightened use of economic reasoning by politicians and other political actors to justify and advocate policy proposals. Smith has published articles in the American Journal of Political Science and the Journal of Politics on political parties in the American states, the structural power of business, the effects of ballot initiatives on voter turnout, and the ways in which ballot initiatives can stimulate citizen engagement in politics. Smith’s current project examines the “culture war” in America, showing that malleability of Biblical interpretations makes religion far less divisive politically than is commonly assumed.

Stewart Jay

Stewart Jay has taught at the UW law school since 1980. Prior to coming to Washington he taught at the University of North Carolina for two years. Before entering teaching, Professor Jay clerked for two years, first with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and then for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Warren E. Burger. His teaching and research interests include constitutional law and constitutional history. Professor Jay is the author of Most Humble Servants: The Advisory Role of Early Judges (Yale 1997). He has worked extensively to assure the reproductive rights of women, particularly access to safe and legal abortions. During 1984-85 he was a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

Ilya Shapiro

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he was a special assistant/advisor to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule of law issues and practiced international, political, commercial, and antitrust litigation at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Shapiro has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, L.A. Times, Washington Times, Legal Times, Weekly Standard, Roll Call, and National Review Online. He is an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School, a member of the board of visitors of the Legal Studies Institute at The Fund for American Studies, a Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society and other educational and professional groups. Before entering private practice, Shapiro clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, while living in Mississippi and traveling around the Deep South. He holds an A.B. from Princeton University, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School (where he became a Tony Patiño Fellow). Shapiro is a member of the bars of New York, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Supreme Court.